there's nothing really hateable. yeah okay, their backgrounds and the hype surrounding them is vile, but when just focussing on the music... it doesn't say anything, or do anything. It just exists, and it's not popular enough for me to ever be exposed to it in my day to day life. Not worth hating.

sometimes it's just nice to have a little half-hour listening to some fast, non-serious, non-pretentious, straight-forward guitar music.

They're not going to win many awards for songwriting. They're not, contrary to what the NME says, or they themselves might think, The Band of Their Generation, far from it. Their gigs are tout jizzfests and ramned with people ballbags. There's quite a bit of filler on their LP. They're annoying bastards, probably manufactured and certainly overhyped, but, BUT...tracks like Wreckin'Bar, Norgaard, You Wanna and We Are Happening are, y'know, okay.

You don't have to buy the t-shirts, records, or declare them anything, but they're not completely shit, and people shouldn't be scared of losing their indie points for admitting that.

And I suppose your kind of right about The Vaccines, my original post wasn't saying how bad they are, just that it's interesting how hyped they are, as you say the NME says they're The Band Of The Generation when not that many people seem to like them.

I don't listen to Oasis' modern output (who does?), nor do I care what Springsteen or Paul Simon are doing nowadays. But you can't not appreciate their classics.

Oasis didn't come along and do what every other band had done in 1992. They *were* a bit different, weren't they? Super derivative, but at the time, bit different. The Vaccines are literally every other band that was around in 04-06.

They are a contrived version of several bands who themselves are piss weak rip offs of other bands. Who ripped off bands before them. And so on to somewhere in the 50s-60s. They aren't particularly offensive however, nor are they amazing but as people have pointed out they have some poppy tunes that are pretty listenable.

I bet there are people here who adore the Strokes but pretend to despise the Vaccines. They need to relax.

and im not a massive Strokes fan. I dont really see the correlation between the two either. People here seem to be in agreement that The Vaccines are boring and inoffensive, which i would say are two of the worst things a band can be desribed as.

I don't *love* them but I like them in the same way I liked The Subways, Nine Black Alps, The Hives, Elastica, Razorlight, Wolfmother, Kingmaker, Pigeon Detectives, The Datsuns, Bluetones, Kasabian, Shed Seven etc. All derivative, all NME hyped with a couple of good songs amidst the dross. I think there used to be a term of 'singles band'.

They do pop music that's guitar based with a couple of catchy songs and an album you can get a bit of throwaway enjoyment out of for about 2 weeks with a few tunes you can whistle in the shower and jump around to at a festival when you're pissed.

I like to give the young lads a chance, especially on the first album when they're just finding their feet as song writers. Who would have thought we'd get Think Tank based on Leisure, or OK Computer after Pablo Honey? I'd love to see the DiS reaction to The Beatles's first album*
*Note: I am NOT comparing The Vaccines to The Beatles, arf.

The second half let's it down a bit. However, there were great albums released in the same week as Pablo Honey by The Auteurs, Saint Etienne and 2Pac. Wiki says that at the time of PH the NME described them as 'one of rock's brightest hopes' and they would have got more hype if there weren't better bands around at the time. Something the Vaccines suffer from I believe.
None of which was the point I was making but I think you know that.

are just taking them too seriously. Their lyrics obviously dont need investigating as to what they're on about, and their music is hardly breaking any boundaries. Its non intelligent indie guitar pop, for people who dont care much for deep introspective lyrics or technical ability. If you want the above listen to botch or something. Justin is a talented lyricist as he showed in his solo venture years ago, the vaccines obviously arent bringing anything new to the table but if they're having a good time, leave them to it i say.

And what this really means is "It's fucking stupid! It has no artistic merit whatsoever! AND THAT'S A GOOD THING!!!". Fucking bollocks. Also there's this idea that stupid music somehow has an "energy". Yes this is true sometimes (Blink 182 et al), but there is no discernible energy in The Vaccines' music.
IT'S ALL NME SPONSORED PROPAGANDA!

just quite simplistic and bland. They're not clunky, they scan pretty well, they don't try too hard. They don't aspire to be anything more though, so I kinda get where you're coming from. Though personally I'd rather have Vaccine's lyrics that King Blue's lyrics any day.

i was just being flippant really. just feels like some people are all too ready to slag off the vaccines just because they've been hyped lots. Not that i like them or anything! just seems like wasted energy complaining about them i suppose.

Give it two years and no-one will care about them. File in with: Hard-Fi, The Kooks, The Fratellis, The View, The Enemy, The Wombats etc.

Although to be honest the only band to emerge in the past 5 years whose name gets me excited is The Gaslight Anthem. Now there's a proper band, and they write guitar music which actually has feeling instead of attempting to ape Arctic Monkeys!

To be fair, I'd rather have two great hit tunes and a couple of mediocre albums before getting dropped from the label experience rather than the desk jockey life. Must be great for 18 months but the comedown would be hard.

there is something actually really sad about that article, it's just so desperate. And the saddest thing is, NME are pretty much ignoring WU LYF and similar bands, who are the artists that teenagers are ACTUALLY excited about

The theory which I'm workshopping at the moment is the music press believe it's time for a big new guitar band, not just because indie has been routed in sales terms but going on patterns: 2006 Arctics, 2001 Strokes, 1996 Oasis, 1991 Nirvana, 1986 Smiths (roughly), 1981 Jam (roughly), 1976 Pistols... The Vaccines aren't huge selling or have across the board awareness, but they're a willing and slightly desperate hook to hang "rock and roll will never die" on because their album was in the charts for a few months (without huge sales, it's not in the year end top 40 album sales chart) and the Glastonbury coverage producer liked them. They got on the Christmas Top Of The Pops with a single that peaked at 53 - their album has climbed back into the top 40 as a result, but only with a similar week on week sales increase to (for some reason) Nero.

which is why I mentioned Wu Lyf, cos it's depressing how out of touch NME/BBC are with what kids are actually listening to. The Vaccines, and now Spector, seem like parodies of the old idea of what an indie band is, they're so focussed on finding a new Strokes that they're just looking for bands who somehow resemble that kind of band.

Most 15-18 year olds, the ones who aren't listening to Los Camp, Johnny Foreigner and Kate Nash, are interested in stuff which lies somewhere between witch house and odd future (Crystal Castles and King Krule for example), either that or 90s retro guitar stuff like Yuck which I guess NME are covering, though bizarrely with much less enthusiasm than they are The Vaccines.

Fuck all of the 15-18 year olds I know listen to indie music, or indeed any of the sort of music that is mentioned on these boards. It might be different in fucking camden or whatever, but not in rural places certainly. You're probably looking at about 5-10% of teenagers here. The majority listen to chart stuff, metal, hip hop, and drum and bass/dubstep. Out of those that do, the bands that are popular are stuff like The Vaccines, The Strokes, Bombay Bicycle Club, The Horrors, The Maccabees, Kasabian, Arcade Fire, Arctic Monkeys etc. Y'know, the kind of stuff that gets radio 1 airplay, the kind of stuff that gets put on the cover of NME. At my sixth form, I was the only one out of pretty much everyone to like stuff like johnny foreigner & los camp. Nobody (myself included) liked Wu Lyf. Certainly, nobody had even heard of witch house (although people did like crystal castles - a band who are radio 1 playlisted and championed by NME, and most of all have fuck all to do with witch house), and none of the indie leaning kids gave a shit about Odd Future. I was the only one of my friends to see Yuck at reading this year, the rest saw the fucking Pigeon Detectives. The people I know at uni are much the same.

I don't know what 15-18 year olds you know, but its seems that people are more excited about the vaccines than wu fucking lyf.

There's nothing to suggest your experience is more representative of the norm than calumlynn's or vice versa. With that said, the tastes of the younger fans of guitar music that I know probably does hew closer to the bands that you mention (Kasabian, Arctic Monkeys, and, still probably most of all, Oasis).
To get back to the matter at hand though, I think the major shortfall of this NME piece is the dichotomy they set up between "inventive"/"culturally relevant"/"interesting" music and "exciting"/"meaningless" (apparently a good thing?) rock 'n' roll. It suggests that guitar music can't be both (or neither), but that they have to fall in one camp or the other. As such, the dividing lines seem inaccurately drawn: PJ Harvey/Elbow vs The Vaccines/Arctic Monkeys/Oasis/The Stone Roses/The Smiths/Smith Westerns/Bombay Bicycle Club/Elvis/T Rex/The Beatles (and solo careers). As simon_t said, in making such comparisons and divisions they're simply trying to declare The Vaccines (and to a much lesser extent, BBC and Smith Westerns) as torch bearers to a selective rock lineage. While also trying to affirm that it is not the critically favoured albums that will necessarily be canonised as a classic of that era.

Nowt to do with what people listen to or what's critically acclaimed. It's about a lineage of kids throughout the years playing in a (now traditional) guitars, bass, singer and drums combo making music that is 'rock and roll'. It's a spirit, attitude, ethos that's exciting and resonant with a teenager with a rebellious streak. But it may appear stale to a lot of people no longer teenagers or those looking at 40 years on with the world changing so dramatically in these time frames.
The Beatles were rock n roll for having long haircuts. The Stones were rebellious for pissing in the street. Maybe we're passed the point of having any 4 piece guitar bands mis-behaving and making 4/4 rock songs to be described as proper rock n roll. The Libertines were probably the last but all taboos are broken now and all tunes played out.
I don't blame the NME in looking for the next teenager rebellion guitar band, I applaud them for it. There just isn't one around that fits the bill to blow some kids mind with bad behaviour, cool haircuts, anti-establishment comments and a rocking sound.

There's plenty in there about audiences and critics:
"a giant, shitfaced audience..."
"No judges from the Mercury Prize are going, ‘Shit, this is interesting...'"
"Endless reviews of The Vaccines’ brilliant debut, even the positive ones, were at pains to note that nothing new is on offer here".
"Arctic Monkeys who ... have realised that grown-up critics are idiots".
"The Vaccines are the most prominent example of a band who’ve been doing this to increasingly large and devoted audiences all year".
Your second paragraph about rebelliousness is a bit of a cognitive leap, but I see how you got there (younger fans vs older fans, and what they say about a more direct/"exciting" connection).
What I'd disagree with is that NME aren't simply looking for a band of this kind, they're declaring The Vaccines to actually be that band: the title of the piece says as much. If it was about the search for such a band, it might inspire a bit less skepticism.

Does McBain think they haven't released anything since Whatever People Say I Am? With The Last Shadow Puppets, Turner's solo soundtrack and the sound of the last couple of albums they've drifted far away from the sound got them the press attention in the first place.

Not to mention that the piece seems to be from the NME's end of year album list edition, a list in which Let England Shake was number one. But it does seem - and I'd recommend, if it's still on shelves anywhere, you have a look at the big Beatles feature in the current issue and in particular the last section - that the NME stance is that its Vaccines love has become a complete self-fulfilling prophecy even though Bombay Bicycle Club, for one, are playing bigger venues on their next tour (but that rise happened under the NME's radar so doesn't count)

BBC were on the cover last year(?) I think, as one of those "how did they get so big?" stories. They've not been under the radar for a fair while now. Think he mentions them in there as another band as an example alongside Vaccines.

the sort of people who buy the NME, or who'd buy the NME if they didn't put Muse on the cover every week. Maybe there's a small group of them in every school, or maybe less- geography matters less, what with Tumblr and that.

I think, although they might not be too obvious, there are a LOT of young people who are completely put off by the cliched so called rebellion of "rock n roll" (hate that phrase), and instead are drawn to slightly edgier (yet still comfortably indie) sounds, rather than wanting to listen to the happy go lucky indie pop of bands such as bombay bicycle club.

I think maybe you've just been unlucky- my younger brother has a LOT of friends in both Newcastle and Manchester who are very into JoFo, Los Camp etc. Those bands are pretty much archetypal 6th form bands (that people tend to grow out of very quickly too)

normally theres a 20 minute indie/rock section at about 1:30am. its pretty much just standard i bet you look good on the dancefloor/smells like teen spirit/song 2/misery business/fat lip/mr brightside etc, but everyone goes pretty much mental for it.

I live in America, where no one has heard of the Vaccines or cares about them or thinks about them at all, and nor will they ever (this can only be a good thing). I've never heard a note of their music and that's not going to change.

But this sad bro writing about "exciting rock n roll" and blathering about the Arctic Monkeys is grasping at straws. The very idea of all that dire corpsefucking landfill indie being passed off as "exciting" is totally bizarre to me, since it sounds like beige wallpaper compared to the rock music I would describe as "exciting." And 99.99% of that shit is metal.

he's sorta got a point in a way, but he also misses a massive one. Harvey's biggest prior album (Stories from the City, obvs) came out when I was 17/18 and I didn't really "get it" at the time. But then I was into bollocksy nu-metal which was, you know, unsophisticated and loud and aggressive and whatever. And now I cringe when I think about it, and the albums have all long been donated to various Oxfam shops across north London.

and, of course, if you wanna go for straight up guitar music that doesn't tackle weighty subjects and is just about writing great songs, there are a million and one better examples from 2011 than that fucking Vaccines LP. Thee Oh Sees made two. Big Troubles. Real Estate. Vivian Girls. Ultimate Thrush. Parts & Labor. Male Bonding. The Babies. Blah di blah blah.

But I guess none of them bought loads of advertising space in the paper, AMIRITE

And I like how their rise has felt like it's genuinely been a case of kids finding out about them slowly. The Vaccines are terrible and shit and so unlikeable. They also have the MOST SMUG guitarist I have ever seen.

difficult to deny. Wreckin' Bar--> Post Break Up Sex--> If You Wanna--> Noorgaard is a great run. Their problem is inconsistency, and the fact that the album was a bit baggy, because it can't all be full of killer indiepop numbers.

Maybe they shouldn't have put a full-length out, same as James Blake really. Lot of artists' downfall these days.

Just because of all the hype, and particularly the fanboyism surrounding Doherty. However, after watching their Reading performance on BBC3 and really enjoying it I started checking them out and now Up The Bracket is possibly one of my Top 10 favourite albums ever. Their second isn't as great but still has it's moments (Can't Stand Me Now, What Katie Did, Likely Lads, Ha Ha Wall)

As for Arctics, when they first came out I couldn't stand the constant NME hyping but I've grown to like them over the years and I appreciate how they've matured with each album and edged away from the mainstream crowd, rather than just ripping their first album off over and over. Although I have to say they're one of the worst live bands I've seen.

In the '90's, indie was a reaction against Britpop & also American Grunge & the Punk revival band movements - it had an outsider and underground(1) and less testosterone-driven(2) perspective.#(1) They are not particularly outsider and underground - it is obvious they have alot of backing.NME is vertually a left of centre Smash Hit's these days.They have big Major label backing & have definately been pushed by them to have a high focus on NME.#(2) they are definately teenage testosterone driven.Never say Britpop as being Indie (see above) - basically a Beat Music filtered through Indie / Alternative influences targeted at chart success post Nirvana co-opting with the Majors (post-1988).Yes they have Ramones (not particularly Indie sounding imo) influences a major influence on Punk.Indie was influenced by Punk but again with the testosterone element significantly reduced.Ramones had a '60's girlband / harmony pop element to their music, similar to The Vaccines.Obviously adding an alternative pop / chart friendly sound by doing so.Havinging a jangly pop / rock sound does not necessarily equate to Indie.Jangly guitars have been about since the late '50's i.e.Buddy Holly and The Crickets
The Vaccines sound like a modern version of skiffle or perhaps Buddy Holly even to me :-P
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQKjI6395iU The Vaccines
compare to
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ku5UeUT7yIQ Buddy Holly
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fOpemAIAmqk Lonnie Donegon